Yes, there are two Americas’ Virginia, they exist as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist. One tolerant and broadminded, the other intolerant and narrow-minded!
Sincerely, thinkingblue, from the TOLERANT AND BROADMINDED USA
PS: Joe (You Lie) Wilson, et al reside in the other America!

Friday, April 14, 2006

I saw a remarkable instant on CNN and couldn't believe what I saw. Am I dreaming this can't be the reality I have been living in for the past 5 years?

A man named Harry Taylor, stood up in a crowd after Mr. Bush delivered another Iraq War PR speech which was sponsored by the nonpartisan World Affairs Council of Charlotte at Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte, North Carolina and with harsh disapprobation, criticized Bush's style of leadership, enumerating the reasons, one after another... TELLING BUSH HE SHOULD BE ASHAMED!

Oh my, I have felt for far too long that I am living in a La La Land of Orwellian language and cloak-and-dagger melodramatic secrecy. It's gotten to the point, you can't believe anything our leaders tell us nor can you say anything antipathetic of this regime, publicly on TV anyway. If it weren't for the articles on the Internet, I believe these charlatans occupying the White House would get away with murder. (Oops, too late, I think they already have)

Please click the picture below and watch a man who got through the steel curtain, Karl Rove uses to protect his COMMANDER IN CHIEF, from dissent...to VOICE what we all have been feeling... to Bush's arrogant Face and give thanks that one brave ordinary person, like you and me, has finally spoken publicly LOUD AND CLEAR AND HAS BEEN SEEN AND HEARD!

There is much to be mined in fairy tales. Fairy tales are about thingsthat never happened but are always with us. A truth we are reluctant toacknowledge can be insinuated into the mind by the account of an eventthat never happened. Hans Christian Anderson’s The Emperor’s New Clothestells just a story. His emperor is a fiction, unnamed and unplaced intime, but he is also all of us at all times—and no fiction.

The swindlers who fleeced the Emperor in Anderson’s tale created a neatlogical trap. The exorbitantly priced and nonexistent clothes theytailored had the wonderful quality, they said, of being invisible toanyone who was “hopelessly stupid or unfit for his office.” Given theEmperor’s acceptance of this criterion of reality, his loyal subjects werepsycho-logically bound to see the invisible.

The virtual taboo against discussing the basic assumptions of our currentnational-istic thinking seems to me to indicate that we have becomepsychologically bound to clothes that only those defining themselves aspatriots can see. If you can’t see the glorious vestments you are“unpatriotic and unfit to be one of us.”

“You are either one of us or one of them—one of the good or one of theevil.” Such pristine clarity from such a simple-minded delusion.

Every generation brings new swindlers (many of them, curiously,self-deceived) and more new clothes for credulous emperors. At any pointin time a sizable wardrobe of such clothes is being paraded in themarketplace of ideas. There are far too few children, too few iconoclasts(to use another image), to keep up with the busy loom of the weavers ofinvisible cloth.

In Anderson’s story the child’s outcry leads to a rapid erosion of faithamong the spectators: truth strips the Emperor naked.Unhappily, in real life, majority opinion frequently overwhelms perception.

Some of the experiments carried out by social psychologist Solomon Aschshow us just how difficult the communication task is that we have beforeus. Asch asked a small group of college men to identify the longest ofseveral lines drawn on paper. Unbeknownst to one of them, all the othershad been instructed to agree on a preposterously wrong answer. Choiceswere announced in open meeting. As the responses forced the “odd man out”to become aware of his position, he not infrequently gave way to themajority and expressed his agreement with them. It does not take anInquisition or a national disaster to make heresy painful. (“Heresy” comesfrom a Greek word meaning, “to choose for oneself.”) Out of the 123 mensubjected to this ordeal, 37 percent conformed. I suspect the resultswould be even more shocking today if Asch were to repeat his experimentafter decades of a mass media managing conformity.

We don’t need Asch’s experiments to tell us that all too often in reallife Anderson’s child would be forced to yield to “adult” opinion.

A cowed opposition in the U.S. and worldwide is not a sign of solidarity,it is a dangerous sign of grave concern that we are becomingpsychologically bound to conforming to the powerful no matter howpreposterous its position. Watching the Congress respond to one hollowplatitude and cliché after another from Mr. Bush was an eerie reminder ofthose German politicians (both supporters and terrified opponents) risingto the vitriol of Adolph Hitler a half a century ago.

It is one thing to rally around our flag and country and the ideals forwhich they stand and quite another to give a blank check to a nakedlybankrupt administration. Those in charge of our country are disconnectedfrom the needs of the American people and isolate us from the community ofnations. They have removed us from being a rational participant in aglobal discourse of sane moral reasoning.

Representative Barbara Lee showed the courage of Thoreau’s “majority ofone” in the face of nearly unanimous error by crying out for reason. Thereare many naked emperors parading the streets of public communications, andwe need a few people who have the confidence of Anderson’s child in theirown senses and judgment.

Now more than ever this country needs a loyal opposition—to unite behindwhat needs to be done and stand against what should not be done.It is our duty, as patriotic Americans, to be heretics pointing out the nakedemperors of our time. It is our right, nay our responsibility, as long aswe pretend to be living in a free, democratic society, to vigorously andopenly challenge what is being portrayed to be, “in the nationalinterests.” To deny that right threatens the very strength of oursystem—its commitment to unfettered thought and expression.

The right to dissent is the strength of our country not its weakness.Weakness is in the position that can’t defend itself against sane rationaldiscourse. Mandating a patriotism that requires unity behind nakedemperors is not a mark of confident and secure leadership. It is a sign ofthe fear of exposure that no amount of invisible cloth can hide.

Don Kyote, an educator, supporter of those who speak truth to power, andenvironmental activist, has been confronting the status quo for his entireprofessional career.###

I just spoke with Harry Taylorby jhwygirlThu Apr 06, 2006 at 06:18:05 PM PDTUPDATE: grokgov has a diary up - and has put up a website with the goal of givin' our friend Harry 1,000,000 THANK YOU's I encourage you to stop by both links if you haven't done so already. And Thank You everyone for participating it what turned out to be a really happy diary. It wasn't much compared to the great work lots of others do around here, but it got me my first 'recommended!' diary. "yeee haw!"jhwygirl's diary :: ::I just spoke with Harry Taylor, the man who dared to question our President on his true commitment to our constitutional right. clone12 details Harry's remarkably brave and articulate act hereSome have speculated whether Harry was the real deal - or a Karl Rove plant. Having spoken to him, I can assure he is not. Frankly, I was shocked he answered the phone. After having read the whitehouse transcript, I had to find the guy and thank him personally. I found myself at a bit of a loss of words - especially since he began thanking me for calling him. We spent about 15 minutes chatting. The guy is genuinely down-to-earth, and I wish I lived closer so that I could go buy him a beer.The guy is genuine, modest, sincere, and honest. He is shocked by all of this, and according to him, it "was not planned."He went on to say that 'it had to be done' and that he can not believe how people can still support 'that guy' - that he has never really been politically active until a few years ago, when he felt he just had to do something.As I said, he said that he is shocked by all of this - that he has a business to run, and that he is real busy, and has an important meeting tomorrow - and now he's got to squeeze in CNN tomorrow morning (ALERT) and the phone message machine is clogged, and he's got a 'ton' of emails. "I don't know if I'll be able to sleep tonight" he said, as he's got quite a 'rush' over all of this, unexpected as it was (again, quite modest)....he said he found that he had to go over to the gym to work out for 45 minutes to try and find some calm.I asked him how the crowd reacted - afterwards, as he left, and as his day has gone on. He said that there was not one negative thing said to him while he was there, and that 4 people actually came up to him and shook his hand. One guy stopped him in the parking lot - Harry couldn't understand how anyone would recognize him - and thanked him.He said that he took another call today from a military wife in Colorado Springs who called to thank him for saying WHAT SHE AND THE REST OF HER FRIENDS CAN NOT. You can tell that just the idea that people can not speak out truely bothers him.He told me that he can't figure out how so many people have heard about this, and their interest in it. He asked me where I was from, and I told him (Montana)...the guy is just so darn nice, it was liking having a conversation with someone you hadn't seen in a while.I told Harry that I had heard of him on the website DailyKos - he hadn't heard of it. So I told him "Oh Harry - they are having a big lovefest over there over you - you should go check it out"So - send Harry some love in this diary. I'm thinking he might be stopping by.PEACE HARRY. WE LOVE YOU! -------

The response at http://www.thankyouharrytaylor.org/ has been remarkable not only for the volume, but for the emotional expression.The common sentiment expressed in the comments... that Harry’s respectful manner was crucial to the president’s ability to hear the message...is universal. Even though the president responded in his instinctually bullying-frat-boy way, he heard Harry Taylor, and he will hear you.Over the weekend the comments (over 12,000) spread from Spain up into Europe.We need a million thank yous to get the media to pay attention when we present the carbon copy to Karl Rove. Please thank Harry at http://www.thankyouharrytaylor.org/.

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Below is a little something I found interesting...from a professional writer, to perhaps, help us blogger wannabees a bit... thinkingblue~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Dana's Quick Writing Course

Posted by Dana BlankenhornI've been writing for over 40 years, professionally for 30. If you're interested in doing the same, here's a simple four-step process that will make your writing all it can be.

Writing is easy to learn, easy to do. But it's the work of a lifetime. I'm still learning, and will be until I die. So get started now.

Write. Don't think, write. Write everything about what you want to say. Don't worry about grammar, or spelling. Just think about everything you want to say and say it. This is sometimes called "writing down the bones." It's simple, it's pure, it's exhausting, it's exhilirating. And when you're done you may have an unholy mess. Don't worry about it.

Find the story. After you finish your draft, and after you take some time away from it (an hour, a day, or even several days, depending on how long it is) go through what you have and find the story there. Look for the beginning, middle, and end.

If you're writing non-fiction, find your lead. Move your key point to the front. If this is a news story, you then take the next most important point, and the next, and the next, in order. (The inverted pyramid lets an editor chop from the bottom.)

If this is a magazine story, your lead is a sales pitch for what follows. You next want to tell the story in a coherent order, and finish with a revelation, a present for the reader who finishes it, sometimes called a tag ending or rim shot.

If this is fiction, find a key moment of high tension and start there. Then tell the back story, and lead your reader toward the climax.

Again, after a rest, read it out loud. This is where you find your tone. Give voice to your story and you'll give your story a voice. If you sound stilted, or stuck-up, or lost, that's a problem you need to fix. Work with your draft until you can read it as a story, until you feel it's ready for an audience.

Finally, polish. Now is when you worry about grammar, and spelling, about subject-verb agreement. Now is when you think about whether you want to violate some grammatical rules in the name of character, or story-telling, or a Tom Wolfe homage. Now is where you make everything sing. Now is where you might print out a copy and work from that, then print out a final copy.

It took me 40 years to work out the obvious. Don't waste that much time. Learn to write now. Write clearly, simply, and learn to enjoy writing. This is the path to leadership in whatever field you've chosen. This is how you give your life meaning.Good luck.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Words of the Day:

Disapprobation

n. Moral disapproval; condemnation.

Heretic

n. 1. A person who holds controversial opinions,especially one who publicly dissents from the officially accepteddogma...

About Me

Yes, there are two Americas’ Virginia, they exist as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist. One tolerant and
free-thinking, the other intolerant and close-minded!
Sincerely, thinkingblue, from the TOLERANT AND FREE-THINKING USA
PS: Joe (You Lie) Wilson, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh et al reside in the intolerant America!